1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to communications and, more particularly, to presence and availability management systems.
2. Description of the Background
A presence and availability management system enables users to control their availability and how that is displayed to other users. Accordingly, users may select if they want to be available to any given person (or group of people) or not, as well as how that person (or group of people) may or may not contact them. In addition, a presence and availability management service enables users to view the availability of their contacts and use that information to determine whether or not and how to initiate communications.
Presence and availability management services have two primary functions. First, to collect information from multiple sources to determine the presence and, according to user-defined preferences, the availability of a given person. For example, a presence and availability management service needs information on what communications network a user is on, and whether or not the user is reachable for each of the networks. Second, a presence and availability management service must distribute the availability information of a given person to interested individuals on a selective basis, according to a variety of user-defined preferences and settings.
In addition to those functions, conventional presence and availability management services have two secondary functions. First, to configure access control settings. A presence and availability management service provides users with the ability to configure an observer's access settings, thereby giving users the ability to control what contact information observers are allowed to view. Thus, users have the choice of what information is published to each of their observers. Second, to store user information to enable the use of the presence and availability management service regardless of the user's network device. By storing user information on the back-end of the presence and availability management system, the presence and availability management service enables users to utilize its services regardless of the user's network device as long as they have a device that is within a communications network. Thus, users can access the presence and availability management service if they are on a cellular phone, a handheld device or a computer workstation.
In a conventional presence and availability management enabled communications system, individuals must request the appropriate presence and availability information from the presence and availability management sub-system when they want to communicate with other individuals on the communications network. However, this model poses two issues. First, such systems do not make the presence and availability information about an individual continuously available to others. Thus, the user's interface cannot display the individual's presence and availability information on a continuous basis. Accordingly, users cannot simply quickly glance at a contact list to see who is available. Second, having to retrieve presence and availability information only when it is needed creates a delay at a critical point in time where user tolerance for it is low.